Renaissance Birmingham

The recent Liberal Democrat local government conference provided an opportunity to visit Birmingham's Council House, one of the great municipal buildings in Britain.

Built in the 1870s in the classical style it resembles nothing more than an Italian renaissance palace. A Victorian extension to the building houses the city's museum and art gallery, which contains one of the finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in Britain.

It should remind us that despite the image of Victorian industrial Britain as being all Hard Times, Coketown and Grangrind, it was not all facts and philistinism. The point is best made by the inscription on the entrance to the art gallery, which includes the words 'By the gains of industry we promote art'. Perhaps it is also an illustration of how economic and social liberalism have often gone hand in hand.

For Liberals with an interest in party history the conference itself at the Birmingham ICC also had an air of homecoming about it. The venue stands on the site of Bingley Hall, where the National Liberal Federation, the party's first democratic representative body, was founded in 1877.

Peterloo memorial

Recent travels took me to Manchester where I saw the new and recently installed plaque to commemmorate the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in which 15 protestors were killed when the cavalry charged a peaceful demonstration demanding reform of Parliamentary representation.

The demonstration took place at St Peter's Field in Manchester and in a reference to the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier the term 'Peterloo' was coined.

Following a spirited local campaign, the new red plaque was installed last year, replacing a previous blue plaque that managed to sanitise the incident by making no reference to the fact that people were killed.

In the longer term the campaigners want to see a proper monument erected to the event.

One result of the Peterloo Massacre was the foundation of the Manchester Guardian newspaper. However, it was to be another 13 years before the Whig government passed the Great Reform Act.

It is not entirely clear to me why, despite Manchester's radical history, there has been a reluctance to have a proper memorial to Peterloo. Possibly it was seen as a stain on the city's reputation rather than something to be commemmorated.

The plaque is on the side of Manchester's Radisson Hotel, formerly the Free Trade Hall, which, as the name suggests, also has its place in British radical history.

Labour's cynical rhetoric over schools

'Schools get ultimatum: improve or face closure' is the screaming headline in today’s Observer. This outburst of tough talking is simply Ed Balls ‘dog whistling’ at right of centre voters, and using teachers who have to work in difficult schools as sacrificial lambs. The Education secretary’s comment that

With all the support on offer for parents and schools, no child is on a pre-determined path to low results - whatever their background and wherever they go to school

is empty rhetoric. The experience of my own local area is that the schools that get the worst results are those with the most challenging pupils – those who for social and/or intellectual reasons are unlikely to get five good GCSEs. There are schools in this part of Hertfordshire that have first-rate facilities, charismatic headteachers and highly-motivated staff, yet which still struggle to attract bright pupils with academically aspirational parents.

The challenge is how to ensure that schools achieve a balanced intake. This is more easily said than done. Some of those on the left (including Liberal Democrats) are critical of parental choice. Yet for the state to allocate school places regardless of family preference is paternalist social engineering of a kind that liberals should surely not support – although a depressing number seem to do so.

To be fair to the government (although I don’t see why I should be), I can imagine circumstances where the ‘brand image’ of a particular school has become so damaged that renaming, rebuilding, relocating and relaunching under new management might be a way of attracting children from a wider range of backgrounds and abilities.

There are no easy answers, and it is a subject about which all political parties need to do more thinking. But Nick Clegg is on the right track with the pupil premium policy. It has to be better than macho rhetoric that will do little to improve schools, but will further demoralise teachers who have to cope with some of the country’s most difficult children.

Press prurience and speculation about pieces of bone

Richard Webster's article Haut de la Garenne, press prurience and the lethal peepshow offers a valuable corrective to the latest sensationalist headlines about the Jersey child abuse investigation:

IF THERE IS ONE lesson which might usefully have been learned by the Jersey police as a result of their recent confusion between a skull fragment and a piece of coconut it is that premature speculation about small pieces of alleged bone is unwise.

Elected Mayors and the Liberal Democrats

I see that my dear wife has an article on Liberal Democrat Voice entitled Why Liberal Democrats should change their tune on elected mayors. It seems to be provoking a lively response.

Jersey 'skull' was not even a piece of bone

Richard Webster's new blog kicks off with a discussion of media reactions to the revelation that the so-called fragments of a child's body the discovery of which propelled the Jersey child abuse enquiry onto the front pages has been revealed by carbon-dating experts to be not a piece of bone at all.

Webster has written extensively about miscarriages of justice against care workers, most notably in his book The Secret of Bryn Estyn and his own investigation had led to this latest revelation about Haut de la Garenne. He is also interviewed by Brendan O'Neill in Spiked magazine.

It seems that police were apparently told as long ago as April by the carbon-dating specialists who had analysed the fragment that 'This one ain’t bone'.

The officer in charge of the case, Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper appears to have consciously sought publicity in order to encourage more possible victims to come forward. But it now appears that the main piece of evidence used to generate this publicity turns out to be bogus.

How much does all this matter? Given what we know about the historical failure of child protection policies and the insular nature of Jersey's society, it seems virtually certain that at least some child abuse will have taken place at Haut de la Garenne. If the publicity from the bogus 'child's remains' story has given any genuine victims the confidence to come forward, might it be that the ends will have justified the means?

Surely, in the end it does matter. The police's task is not just to publicise their own revulsion at child abuse, it is to get justice for the victims and punish the genuinely guilty. The saga of the skull fragment must surely cast doubt on the way the police have handled the investigation, and will not help them when cases actually come to court. At the same time media frenzy risks triggering not only truthful accusations against the genuinely guilty, but also false accusations against the innocent. Which again raises the twin dangers that genuine victims will not get justice if the currency of complaints has been debased by false accusations, and that the innocent will be convicted.

Remember that the football manager Dave Jones (in the news this week for taking Cardiff City to the FA Cup Final) some years ago found himself facing 13 charges of child abuse but the entire case against him collapsed when it came to court.

Child abuse is not only a serious crime, it is one that is rightly regarded with particular abhorrence by today's society. It is important therefore that when the police investigate accusations of child abuse they are thorough and rigorous in investigating evidence and avoid manipulating the media to achieve sensational coverage.

100 years and a day ago - Asquith announces the introduction of old age pensions

I'm terrible for remembering people's birthdays a day or so too late, and it's the same with anniversaries of significant events. So I failed in my intention to post yesterday on the anniversary of H.H. Asquith's announcement in his budget of 1908 of the introduction of old age pensions. But no other Lib Dem blogger appears to have posted on the subject, and it is worth commemorating, so forgive this being a day late.

Although Asquith had succeeded Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister a month earlier, he had already prepared the budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer and chose to present it to the House of Commons instead of his successor at the Treasury, Lloyd George.

His speech was workmanlike rather than a great flight of oratory, but he did comment that the Liberals' sympathy for social reform was to be ‘translated into a concrete and constructive policy of social and financial effort.’ He pointed out that older people were:

still unprovided for except by casual and unorganized effort or, by what is worse, individious dependence on Poor Law relief. I said then that we hoped and intended this year to lay firm the foundations of a wiser and humaner policy… I propose now to show how we intend to redeem the promises which I then made.

Later in the month he introduced the Old Age Pensions Bill, which provided for non-contributory pensions of 5 shillings a week to those over 70 with less than £21 a year in income and who had not claimed relief under the Poor Law. Asquith described it as a 'modest and tentative' measure, which indeed it was. Asquith had effectively announced the measure a year earlier, putting aside funds to pay for old age pensions.

This has echoes of 100 years later, when George Brown announced a financial measure affecting the poorer members of society that was actually to be implemented the following year. But whereas the introduction of old age pensions was a step forward for a better, fairer society, the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax, introduced by a supposedly left-of-centre government was a step in precisely the opposite direction.

Mixed fortunes inside the M25!

Try as I might I can never keep up this blog during the local election period. It's partly that there's always another leaflet to write, or deliver, or canvassing to do, but also that I'm too focused the election campaign to write anything that would be of any interest to those other than anyone involved in Watford elections.

But here we did well - comfortably ahead on the popular vote in the Watford constituency (which includes part of Three Rivers District) and winning 14 out of 17 seats. We narrowly missed out on two more seats.

Indeed we and Three Rivers were the Lib Dem success stories within the M25 - things not turning out so well in London. It seems to me that the party didn't quite decide what it was trying to achieve in the London elections. Brian Paddick was selected way too late to have a real tilt at taking on Boris and Ken, and yet was too good a candidate to be a mere token presence. However, his campaign probably drew attention from the GLA contest where we really needed the votes.

If the party is serious about mounting a real challenge for the London mayoralty in 2012, I suggest that campaigners study the Mary Robinson presidential campaign in 1990 in the Irish republic - the only other example I can think of where a third party won a campaign with a multi-million sized electorate. If I remember rightly the key elements of that were early selection, a candidate with a reach well beyond the party base (which strangely Paddick didn't seem to have), clear unique selling points for the candidate, a really strong grassroots campaign building up credibility for an effective air war during the campaign itself. These things combined with an awful lot of luck.

Failing that the party would be better to concentrate on its GLA campaign and candidates even at the risk of looking less than serious in the Mayoral contest. But then my experience is of fighting elections in a town of 80,000 population not a city of 7 million. What do I know?

Gladstone's birthplace

We stayed on for another day in Liverpool to see at least some of the sights of the European Capital of Culture.

Liverpool has an air of grandeur, as befits what was a major city of empire. As is well-known, much of the city's economic power was built on the slave trade. Among those who profited from slavery was John Gladstone, father of Liberal prime minister William Gladstone. Gladstone pere was Liverpool merchant, who owned slaves on his plantations in the West Indies. Perhaps as a result of this, Gladstone always had something of a blind-spot about slavery, being less whole-hearted than one might expect in his condemnation of it.

William Gladstone was born at 62 Rodney Street, Liverpool, which consists of very grand Georgian terraces. The street was also the birthplace of the poet Arthur Hugh Clough and I see that there is a campaign under way to restore it to its former glory.

This year's conferences take us to places that mark both ends of Gladstone's life. At Bournemouth in September, those want to take a little time off from debates can visit the splendid St Peter's church where Gladstone took his last communion - there is a plaque in the church to mark this although no reference it would seem on the website.

'No' to Lisbon referendum is a missed opportunity

To throw in my twopence-worth, I can't help thinking the Lib Dems have not only made a tactical mistake tonight, but also lost a strategic opportunity.

For many years Britain's political class has been considerably more Europhile than the electorate appear to be, at least judging by opinion polls.

Yet on the one occasion the electorate were called upon to vote about Europe they delivered an unexpectedly large pro-EEC (as it was then) majority. In recent times various referendum pledges have taken the sting out of the European issue at election time.

But the gap between politicians and public on the issue remains, and it is unhealthy for our political system, creating the impression that Europe is a kind of organised conspiracy against the public.

If the Lisbon treaty really is less of a big deal than the abortive constitution, a tidying up exercise more than anything, then surely this was the best opportunity for pro-Europeans to win a referendum. With no great principle at stake, a Yes campaign could explain the practicalities and hope for victory. This would quieten the Eurosceptics at least for a while.

By contast if the pro-Europeans lost the vote then that would put some responsibility on Eurosceptics actually to find a way forward rather than just opposing. I suspect that had the Conservatives been in power they would have ended up agreeing to something very similar to Lisbon.

The point is that at some point pro-Europeans will have to stand and fight, and this was probably the best chance to do that, so it's an opportunity missed.

Amid all this the policy we actually have for an in or out referendum on the EU makes very little sense at all. It would solve nothing, since even the Conservatives support EU membership, none but a small number of obsessives at either end of the political spectrum actually want us out of the EU.

From the evidence of Alastair Carmichael's interview, the parliamentary appear to be avoiding bitterness and recriminations. And Nick Clegg has made just about the best possible fist of defending a weak policy. But much as it pains me to say it, the rebels were right.

Casinos, liberalism and localism

I'm in the process of catching up on Lib Dem blogs from the past week or so. I have spotted this from Adrian Sanders MP about casinos and cite it as another example of what I was going on about here about sticking to a consistent Liberal ethic.

Now, I should say on the subject of casinos that my personal views are a bit puritanical. I rarely gamble and feel it preys on the vulnerable. Despite my usual libertarian impulses I am uncomfortable about TV adverts encouraging people to have a flutter on sporting events. So on this issue at least, I am not quite the wacky libertarian, although equally I don't want to impose my personal prejudices on everyone else.

So I feel uncomfortable about Adrian Sanders simply criticising the government for allowing casinos. To me the liberal solution ought to be about decentralised decision-making. It should be up to local areas to determine their policies towards casinos and the like.

I certainly wouldn't advocate a super casino for Watford. Yet I can't see why councils in Torbay or Blackpool or wherever should be prevented from encouraging them if they feel that would help with local employment and regeneration.

It's not so much the fact that Adrian Sanders disapproves of casinos and gambling that I have a problem with. It's the uncritical acceptance that policy in this area should be top-down and centralised.

Berwick-upon-Tweed: Scotland's Gibraltar or England's Kosovo?

I have been meaning for a little while to post on the subject of South of Scotland SNP MSP Christine Grahame for Berwick-upon-Tweed to be returned to Scotland.

My father always refers to Berwick as Scotland's Gibraltar. I am not much of a nationalist, but each time I travel northward on the east coast mainline, I think that the River Tweed feels like it ought to be the border. And from the train at least Berwick looks more like a Scottish than an English town.

Yet Berwick residents, Scottish and English alike, have seemed happy enough these last few centuries with their position. This may change as I understand that the government has approved a plan for unitary government in Northumberland, which will take away some of Berwick's autonomy. Joining Scotland may therefore look like an attractive option.

Across Europe many if not most wars have been caused by territorial disputes around which nation or empire a particular territory should belong to based on the wishes of its inhabitants.

How do you decide which unit of territory or population should get self-determination? What if Scotland declared that Berwick is an integral part of the national territory regardless of the views of the town's citizens? Or if Berwickers wanted to rejoin Scotland, should this only be done if the rest of England acquiesced? Or should it be just down to the views of those who live in Berwick?

We search in vain for consistency in European precedent. Gibraltarians don't want to become part of Spain. But Spaniards don't accept its right to be separate from Spain. Kosovo has just seceded from Serbia against the will of the Serbs. Yet Northern Cyprus is still a pariah state within Europe, even though its residents clearly don't want to be part of the rest of Cyprus. I gather that both Spain and Cyprus voted against independence for Kosovo.

There but for the 1707 Union go we in Britain. So whether or not the Scots Nats get to reclaim Berwick, I suggest its very anomolous state - a town in a different country from its eponymous county - helps to undermine the case for an independent Scotland and is a good argument for maintaining the United Kingdom.

Castro and the Staggers

Peter Wilby once wrote that:

One of the earliest lessons I learned as [New Statesman] editor was that many readers regard Castro rather as Telegraph readers used to regard the late Queen Mother, and that harsh criticism of the Cuban president would lead to threats of cancelled subscriptions.

I wonder therefore whether it was brave or foolhardy of current acting editor Sue Matthias to publish in this week's edition this article by Isobel Hilton as its comment on Fidel's resignation.

Although balanced in tone, it is more negative than positive about El Comandante's legacy. So much so that it wouldn't have looked out of place in the Spectator.

Fact-checking Harry Potter

I am currently listening to a band called Bodies of Water whose excellent album/cd is called Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink.

Their music is hard to categorise. They comprise two men and two women and tend all to sing at once, in a style a little reminiscent of the Mamas and the Papas. Then the music is all a bit grandiose and bombastic, in a way that reminds me of Arcade Fire. And then the songs seem to be all about religion, rather like Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming or the entire oeuvre of Nick Cave.

You can hear for yourselves here (I can't do that clever putting the YouTube screen up on the blog thing - perhaps a kind reader might help me out with this).

Their music apart, I was rather taken with this website entry by group member David Metcalf about the jobs he had before the band 'made it'. One was fact-checking Harry Potter trivia games. He comments:

I may be the world's only expert on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets who did not actually read this book.

As one who believes that adults have no business reading the Harry Potter books, I approve.

Liberal England and Enoch Powell

Jonathan Calder highlights that within a week of his starting to write a column on the New Statesman website, the magazine's editor John Kampfner resigned.

A little further investigation reveals that Kampfner resigned over a row with the owner Geoffrey Robinson MP over the publication's costs. So how much must they have been paying Jonathan? Perhaps Lord Bonkers was demanding a cut to help subsidise his Rutland estates. The price was clearly too much for the Statesman's proprietor.

All of which puts me in mind of a story I heard about Enoch Powell, who was notoriously tough in negotiating fees for newspaper articles and the like.

Asked by an editor to contribute an op-ed piece, Powell immediately demanded to know how much he would get paid. On being told the intended fee, he said 'I'm not a charity you know.' The editor replied that Powell's then party leader Edward Heath has been paid the same for writing an article. To which Powell replied, 'Yes, and he would have written it for nothing if you had asked him.'

Journal of Liberal History

Sticking to historical matters, the latest edition of the Journal of Liberal History includes my review of James Moore's The Transformation of Urban Liberalism: Party Politics and Urban Governance in Late Nineteenth-Century England.

The latest edition isn't available on the web, so far as I can see, and I suppose it is not quite the done thing to put the review on this blog.

But this seems as good a moment as any to plug the Liberal Democrat History Group, which publishes the journal, a peer-reviewed publication that includes not just general articles, but original research by practising historians across the whole range of Liberal history. In my view it is easily the best thing published from within the Lib Dem family.

I encourage readers who don't already subscribe to do so.

Bermondsey revisited (again)

We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the Bermondsey by-election.

To commemorate the event, Jonathan Derbyshire has written fair-minded article, which appeared in last week's Time Out.

The author is the son of one of my Lib Dem colleagues on Watford Borough Council (although I gather he is not himself a Lib Dem).

Making Liberal history sell

I have just finished Ian Packer’s excellent book Liberal Government and Politics, 1905-15, which offers an original and thought-provoking reassessment of the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith administrations.

The book deals with a fascinating period of British politics. Written in lucid and engaging prose, it deserves a wider readership than just academic specialists. Yet, I suspect, few general readers are likely to get hold of it. For it retails at £49 and if it is typical of academic monographs will have had a print run of just a few hundred. It will end up only being obtainable through university rather than public libraries.

Dr Packer’s problem is that he is not already famous in some other field. Well-known politicians, be they William Hague, Douglas Hurd or Mark Oaten seem to manage to get books on historical subjects published in popular editions at reasonable prices. This is so even if they carry out little or no original research and merely piggy-back on the work of others. It’s less a case of ‘A Life of William Wilberforce by William Hague’ and more ‘Hague On Wilberforce’.

Further down the intellectual food chain, publishers fall over themselves to bring out books by assorted celebrities who seem to ‘write’ more books than they are ever likely to read.

Perhaps the answer is for academics to give up publishing books in their own names that are doomed to remain in obscurity. Instead they should act as ghost-writers for celebs who have no time between hairdos and buying clothes to do any writing, but whose names will certainly sell books.

That way, perhaps Dr Packer’s little volume could yet reach a wider audience as Victoria Beckham’s Book of Edwardian Liberalism.

Letter to Lib Dem News

For the first time in a while, this week I have a letter in Liberal Democrat News. In was a response to Bob Russell MP's comment to the effec that we don't need three Tory parties in British politics. This is what I wrote:

In political argument, there is an unofficial rule that the first person to mention the Nazis automatically loses.

In the Liberal Democrats there should be an equivalent rule - that in any debate the first person to accuse a colleague of being a Tory loses.

Bob Russell MP tells us that ‘there is no need and no room for a third Tory party’ in British politics, implying that some in our party think otherwise.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in such things, but I try to take some interest in political debate within the party. I attend conference, subscribe to Liberator, CentreForum etc, and have read at least some of the Orange Book and Reinventing the State. Yet nowhere have I seen any Liberal Democrat argue that we should become a third (or even second) Tory party.

Perhaps Mr Russell has a grasp of political philosophy far more sophisticated and profound than my own. Yet I can’t help thinking that as we discuss how our Liberal principles should be best applied to current politics, it isn’t helpful if we resort to the cheap jibe of accusing colleagues with whom we disagree of being Tories.

The aim is to be distinctively Liberal, not any kind of Tory party.

Sticking to a liberal narrative - a small suggestion

During the latest hiatus in this blog, I was struck by the coverage given to Lib Dem MEP Fiona Hall’s call to ban patio heaters and Greg Mulholland MP’s proposal that pubs should have to sell wine in 125ml measures. Both of these raise the problem of liberals calling for individual freedom in the abstract, but in practice calling for more regulation of people’s lives.

Of the two I think that Fiona Hall’s quest is the more questionable. Patio heaters are certainly bad for the environment and it may well be true that they consume more energy (or whatever) than running a car. And yet lots of other things that are not eco-friendly are not banned. What if someone didn’t want to own a car, but liked occasionally to sit outdoors on chilly evenings, and used their patio heater sparingly? Why should they not have that choice.

Greg Mulholland, on the other hand seems a little unfairly maligned. If I have understood right, he has not (as has been claimed) said that pubs should not be able to serve larger measures of wine, only that they should offer small glasses as an option. This is a fair point. I have come across some bars that serve wine only in large 250ml measures. If wine is up to three times as strong as beer, then this is the equivalent of serving beer pint-and-a-half measures and nothing less. But if the suggestion is sensible of itself, it is so easily misrepresented that it risks making the Lib Dems seem nannyish.

How we are perceived by the public is not just about our principles or policies, but also a question of what our representatives choose to talk about. For example, the Liberal Democrats support controls on immigration. But if a Lib Dem MP chose to talk obsessively about the need for more strong immigration controls, to the exclusion of other issues, this would seem at variance with our general approach to politics, even if said MP was not going against party policy. It would look like pandering to the illiberal far right.

Projecting a clear Liberal narrative means that our leaders, parliamentarians, council leaders etc. need to consider when launching any initiative how it fits in with our Liberal principles. No one wants the kind of control-freakery that Mandelson and Co. operated in New Labour. But my modest suggestion to the new leader, if he wants to project the Lib Dems as a consistently Liberal force, is to give a very firm steer to the party colleagues along the following lines:

“Before speaking out or launching a new initiative on any issue, think how well it fits our liberal message. Is it

• decentralising or centralising?
• pro or anti civil liberties?
• pro or anti personal choice?
• good or bad for the environment?
• likely or not to combat poverty and exclusion?
• drawbridge down or drawbridge up?

If it fails one or more of these tests, then think twice about going public. Ask advice from the leader/party spokesperson/policy team. Sometimes these values may conflict and we have to prioritise one over the other. Sometimes our view will have to be tempered by pragmatism. But remember that the transient publicity we get on a single issue will affect the overall image of the party. It can serve either to undermine or reinforce our general message. Think before sounding off!”

Dr Evan Harris MP, organ donation and presumed consent

Rod Liddle in the Spectator is in particularly fine form this week, denouncing the idea of ‘presumed consent’ for organ donations.

He remarks that the BMA and GMC that are often criticised because they:

fail to treat patients as human beings… they are viewed instead as an array of disembodied, problematic health issues; a dodgy ticker here, clogged-up lungs there and so on

My own view is that the correct liberal approach to expert opinion, whether from the medical or other professions should be one of respect for specific knowledge and expertise, but not one of uncritical deference. Even those whose job is to heal the sick will occasionally be guilty of special pleading or pursuing their own professional interests above the good of society or its citizens. Democracy is all about lay people holding experts to account on behalf of the people.

Sadly, it comes as no surprise to see that our own Lib Dem representative of the medical profession, Dr Evan Harris MP is a great enthusiast for ‘presumed consent’ and states on his website that this is Liberal Democrat policy. I confess I hadn’t realised it was party policy, and it’s depressing if unsurprising to find this out. No doubt it was snuck through in the small print of a particularly dull policy paper, or approved in a policy motion in a graveyard slot (no pun intended) at conference.

Although Evan Harris is in many ways a good egg, and there are lots of things I agree with him about, I can’t help feeling that he is only secondarily a Liberal Democrat MP, and first and foremost a Parliamentary spokesman for the BMA.

I find it depressing, too, that my own liberal views seem better represented by a wacky columnist in a right-of-centre weekly than by my party’s spokesman on science.

PS: It is possible to show scientific rigour on medical issues without becoming a mere mouthpiece for professional opinion. Ben Goldacre’s
Bad Science blog is a good example of the genre.

Nick Clegg's speech: 'free schools' may be fine but miss the point about what's wrong with our schools

My decision to spend Saturday at the Liberal Democrat conference at the LSE left me so far behind with other pressing matters that I had no time to blog.

I get the feeling that Nick Clegg's proposal for 'free schools' has gone down better with the press and bloggers than it has with the party's local government family. As at least one person pointed out on Saturday, times have moved on since the days when schools were run by overbearing and often inefficient local authorities. These days LEAs are hands-off and light-touch, often merely passporting funds from central government to schools.

These days the powers are with governors and head-teachers. One imagines that the sort of people who might want to set up their own schools are those who are already running them. In fact, from my limited experience, I think there is some danger that school governing bodies can become self-selecting cliques not really accountable to anyone for the large amount of public money they spend.

I hope, however, that the Lib Dem local government family, LGA group, ALDC etc. don't react defensively to this in a 'councillors know best', 'get off my turf' sort of way. To do so merely reinforces the negative image that some in the party and many more in the wider world have of local government. Instead, they should engage in discussion with Nick about his proposal, accepting that it is a good and Liberal idea, but pointing out its limited application.

The more I think of it, the more I realise that no matter how good the facilities, well-motivated the staff or impressive the OFSTED reports, what parents really want from schools is that their children should fit in, make nice friends and be happy. Even exam league table results are probably less important than these things.

In this part of Hertfordshire, where there is a very strong culture of parental choice, there are at least two secondary schools which, despite their glowing OFSTED plaudits, dedicated teaching staff and state of the art classrooms and sports facilities are spurned by many middle-class parents because they are seen as 'rough'. So the ideal is an academically and socially balanced intake. But it is hard to achieve this without patrician feats of social engineering, taking power away from parents and giving them to educational officials. Academic selection just provides an escape route for a few, not better outcomes for everyone. 'Selection by estate agent' is more invidious still.

Even my preferred idea of a ballot to allocate places at popular schools is no panacea, since there will still have to be catchment areas, and it will be hard to make these sufficiently demographically balanced to ensure every school has a truly comprehensive intake.

How to create an education systems that allows for diversity in provision, parental choice, a fair admission system and high quality choice is a multi-faceted problem to which I don't pretend to have the answer. 'Free schools' may well be part of the solution, but if so, I suspect they will make at best a marginal difference.

Homes of the great Liberal leaders

In a feature on famous ancestors of twenty-first century personalities, The Word magazine mentions that actress Helena Bonham-Carter has recently bought the Oxfordshire home of her great grandfather, the Liberal prime minister H.H. Asquith.

I imagine this must be The Wharf at Sutton Courtenay (pictured right). Despite his image as very much an establishment figure, Asquith came from a relatively modest middle-class background and was never particularly wealthy. Indeed, he declined the leadership of the Liberal party in 1899 in favour of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman because the need to earn his living as a barrister to support his family meant that he could not give enough time to politics.

The Wharf does not look particularly grand, but even so its upkeep was too much for Asquith's widow Margot, who sold it in the 1930s , claiming to be 'dog poor'. Call me sentimental, but I like the thought of the house being back in the family. I was saddened to see, while on holiday in the New Forest a few years ago, that Malwood, home of the nineteenth-century Liberal leader Sir William Harcourt, is now in institutional use by a utility company or similar and bears not even a plaque to mark its first owner. Campbell-Bannerman's home, Belmont Castle is now a Church of Scotland 'eventide home', although I haven't been there to see whether there is any reference to 'C-B'.


The loss to the country of Liberal prime minister Lord Rosebery's seat at Mentmore Towers, which contained one of the great collections of art and furniture in Europe, in the 1970s is testimony to the philistinism and incompetence of the Callaghan government. It is still standing and was for many years the headquarters of the Natural Law party. The other Rosebery pile, Dalmeny House on the Firth of Forth, is still lived in by the Seventh Earl, and is open to the public (although apparently closed for refurbishment during 2008).

Gladstone's home of Hawarden Castle in Flintshire is still owned by the Gladstone family, but is not open to the public, although I am lucky enough to have seen inside his study, the 'temple of peace', when I attended the 'Gladstone Umbrella' conference at St Deiniol's library (which houses Gladstone's collection of books) last summer. Lloyd George's boyhood home, Highgate, in Criccieth is part of the Lloyd George Musuem.

I doubt whether it is Helena Bonham-Carter's intention to keep The Wharf as anything other than a private home. But perhaps she might be persuaded to open it occasionally, for example for Heritage Open Days, the annual event in which properties that are normally closed to the public open their doors for one weekend. As an Asquithian, I would make the effort to go.

Activist-bashing – don't let's start!

Jonathan Calder and James Graham have each commented on the ‘anti-activist’ spin given by the Guardian to Nick Clegg’s speech on education at tomorrow’s conference.

It isn’t clear whether this angle came from the reporter or a briefing from the leader’s office but, if the latter, they should call the dogs off now unless they want to make life difficult for their boss.

Most conference delegates want to support the leader, especially a newly-elected one, and are inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on new policy initiatives.

Furthermore, recent experience on tax, post offices, Trident etc. suggests that if the leadership treat the members properly, explain their policies, campaign on them and engage in debate inside and outside the conference, they are likely to carry the day.

The vast majority of activists will listen with an open mind to the arguments. But they don’t want their votes to be co-opted in favour of a right-wing project, nor to be blackmailed on a test of loyalty to the leadership. If their opinions are treated with respect, they are more than likely to back the leader. But if the policy proposal is presented as the leader taking on the activists, they may think, ‘Do they mean me?’, turn all difficult and vote the ‘wrong’ way.

Of course, as I often say here, there are those within the party who sometimes give the impression that their views have not moved on much since 1979. But it is unnecessary for the leadership to go out of their way to bait and antagonise them. It is one thing to put forward a policy that Tony Greaves doesn’t like, but quite another to suggest it’s a good idea because Tony Greaves won’t like it. A lot of people have a soft spot for Tony, even if we don’t agree with him.

The centre of gravity within the party is probably more collectivist than I (and probably Nick Clegg too) would like. But we don’t have a militant tendency that needs to be challenged, or if we do the majority of the activists don’t belong to it.

It’s worth remembering that one reason why David Laws was not in a position to mount a credible leadership challenge whereas Nick Clegg was, despite many similarities in their views, is that through his Orange Book chapter on health, Laws appeared to have gone out of his way to antagonise the ‘average activist’. Nick had avoided this trap, while still sounding like someone with new ideas.

In the leader’s dealings with party members, persuasion will work, confrontation will be a recipe for disaster.

But, of course, it may just have been a pesky journalist looking for an angle.

The conquest of Everest – a Liberal Democrat success?

Well not quite, and to say so would, at the very least, be anachronistic.

But Sir Edmund Hillary’s death reminds me that the leader of the successful Everest expedition in 1952, John Hunt, later Sir John Hunt, later Baron Hunt of Llanfair Waterdine, was a Liberal Democrat member.

I noticed his entry the last issue of Who’s who in the Liberal Democrats published before his death in 1998. His Wikipedia entry makes no mention of his political allegiance, but according to the Dictionary of national biography, he was ennobled in 1966, sat initially as a cross-bencher, but joined the SDP on its formation in 1981. The author of the DNB entry states:

Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing had for the first time reached the summit—now surveyed at 29,035 feet. But it was to the leader that the greatest credit was due. Even though he had personally climbed to 27,350 feet in support of the two assaults, it was his battle-hardened powers of leadership and skilful planning that assured success.

I see that Hunt published an autobiography, Life is Meeting, which is available from Amazon for little more than the price of the postage. Perhaps Nick Clegg should read it, containing as it no doubt does, wise words from a successful Liberal Democrat leader.

Free markets and their discontents (or Adam Smith versus Tim Farron)

This Saturday I’m bound for the Liberal Democrat Manifesto conference at the LSE, and as part of my preparation I have been trying to read Reinventing the State, edited by Duncan Brack, Richard Grayson and David Howarth, which was billed last autumn as a sort of riposte to the Orange Book.

I have to confess to finding such things heavy-going. Collections of essays by practicing politicians are rarely an exciting read, usually pulling their punches. Although the Orange Book was spun (and counter-spun) as a statement of intent by those wishing to move the party to the right, it was actually quite a dull read, with only a couple of chapters saying anything that might frighten the horses.

A copy of Reinventing the State has been sitting pristine and unopened on my bookshelf for some months, a testimony to my inner battle between support for Lib Dems thinking and writing about policy and finding at any given time that other reading matter is a little bit more appealing. To force my way through it, I have deliberately chosen the section on economics, and in particular the chapters by Paul Holmes and Tim Farron, partly because they are those that I am most likely to disagree with. In doing so I think I have learned something about the Lib Dems and economic policy, although not quite what the authors intended.

Paul Holmes’s chapter is entitled ‘The limits of the market’. In some ways it suggests to me that my own views and his are not so far apart as I thought. Holmes accepts the argument of Francis Fukuyama that the free market has ‘succeeded in producing unprecedented levels of material prosperity’. But his entire article appears predicated on the assumption that there are people in the political mainstream (possibly in the Liberal Democrats) who believe that there are no limits to market forces and that all aspects of human society can be left safely to the free market.

I doubt, however, whether there are any Liberal Democrats, even David Laws, Andy Mayer et al, who would not accept the notion of market failure and support the need for state intervention in order to achieve social or political objectives. There may well be disagreement about exactly when and how the state should intervene: as provider or enabler, for example; and about how public services should be held to account: by more power to local councils or more choice for citizens or both. But I doubt whether anyone who believed absolutely in an unfettered free market would think of joining the Lib Dems, and I don’t know of anyone in the party who fits that category. It seems to me that the ‘Beveridge-ist’ argument within the party is aimed at fighting an ‘economic liberal’ phantom – a caricature that doesn’t really exist.

This is confirmed by the comments of both Holmes and Farron about that godfather of free markets, Adam Smith. Holmes describes Smith as believing that ‘the market rules unchallenged’. Farron is more forthright still, commenting:

Adam Smith was a great economist and Mrs Thatcher’s hero. His strong belief was in the inbuilt checks and balances within the free market and that any imperfections in the market would always be rectified by the ‘invisible hand’. This is of course a load of old guff.

To which he then adds:

Smith was right to observe that the market needs a hand, but it has to be the highly visible hand of the community or state.

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this. Some might say that Farron has here cut through Adam Smith’s sophisticated argument with a devastating five-word rebuttal. If only the Sage of Westmoreland and Lonsdale had been around 200 years ago then the Wealth of Nations would have achieved a deserved place in the dustbin of history and the world would be better off for it.

Alternatively one might point out that Adam Smith did acknowledge the existence of market failure and the need for the state to intervene. He argued in favour of state activity for the purposes of national defence, provision of a system of justice and investment in public infrastructure. We should also remember that Smith argued in favour of higher wages for the poor and for universal education. He wrote in what was essentially a pre-capitalist era and that his arguments in favour of free markets were to a great extent directed at tackling monopolies, special privileges and attempts by merchants and employers to keep wages low and prices high.

It is for these reasons that Smith’s legacy is contested and can be an inspiration as much to the liberal centre-left as to the Thatcherite right. One is left wondering whether Farron has actually read anything by Adam Smith or even bothered to consult a standard reference book to find out what he actually wrote. Once again, we are dealing with a caricature of free market arguments, based on a misunderstanding of their origins. And yet Holmes, if not Farron, does acknowledge that the free market does bring benefits to society.

Why this need to set up a free market straw man to be knocked down? I think the reason is that the dominant political discourse over the past century has been between the collectivist, socialist left and the capitalist right. Thatcherites and Reaganites stole the rhetoric (although not necessarily the reality) of the free market. Since most, if not all, economically successful societies in the past century have been based on some form of market economy, there is little alternative for a serious political party than to support the free market. Yet it is tainted as a ‘right-wing’ notion and we are a left-of-centre party. So our support for market economics is in some eyes a rather embarrassing fact, something to be mentioned reluctantly, if at all, before passing on to other things. Those who talk too loudly and enthusiastically about the free market are to be regarded with suspicion – as neo-Thatcherites.

This then reduces debate within the party about economic policy and public service reform fears about right-wing conspiracies. All of which is a pity, for a number of reasons. First, that as a serious party we have to be concerned with how to generate the wealth that we want to use for socially-desirable objectives. Secondly, because market economics do have a progressive as well as Conservative pedigree and Liberals are entitled to a share of the credit for their success. Most importantly, name-calling and conspiracy theories stifles debate and reduces the quality of thinking within the party about both economics and public service reform.

So let us try to find what we can agree on, which I think is something like as follows. Free markets are pretty much proven to be the best way of generating wealth and prosperity. But if left unfettered they can and do have socially damaging consequences, benefiting the better-off rather more than the poor. So there needs to be government intervention in many aspects of social policy to ameliorate and overcome market failure. In both our economic and social policy we as Liberals should prioritise improving the lot of the poor, the excluded and the disempowered in order to create a prosperous and equitable society.

If we can agree on that, as I hope most Lib Dems could, then we can debate seriously, and without name-calling, exactly how and when solutions based on the market or state intervention, decentralisation of power to local authorities or greater choice for consumers, are most appropriate in achieving Liberal objectives.

My late eight for '08

At the end of December I was named by Liberal England in the 'eight wishes for 2008' meme.

It's a little late, but still early enough in the new year to give my list.

1. Success for the Liberal Democrats in the May local elections in Watford and elsewhere.

2. Success too for the various sports teams that I follow - promotion for Watford, Montrose and Dundee football teams and London Scottish rugby, and some sign of emergence from the doldrums for Coventry City FC and at rugby for Coventry and Nuneaton.

3. Scotland to win the Calcutta Cup.

4. Some sign that under Nick Clegg the Liberal Democrats will be more distincively Liberal, and less grandmotherly on social and lifestyle issues (smoking, drinking gambling etc.)

5. For those Lib Dems who disavow the term 'economic Liberal' to say what sort of economic policy we should have. Then at least there can be a debate.

6. For Watford's new swimming pools/leisure centres (currently under construction) to open and to have a swim in each of them.

7. To complete my Phd thesis (or at least a first draft)

8. To avoid being deleted from the Liberal England blogroll.

Clegg, commercials and children's TV

With the Christmas and New Year haze lifting, I have some quick catching up to do. So here goes: ‘Congratulations, Nick, well done! I’m sure you’ll be a great leader, but what’s all this nonsense about restricting advertising aimed at children?'

One of the themes of this blog has been the contradiction between the Lib Dems’ oft-expressed commitment to individual liberty in the abstract and the enthusiastic support that the party gives in practice to banning things or activities (see fox hunting, smoking in public places, goldfish as fairground prizes etc. ad nauseam). Such a disjunction hinders the party’s attempts to create a coherent narrative – are we instinctive libertarians or health’n’safety fascists?

It would no doubt make the Lib Dems seem cranky if we were to mount noisy campaigns in defence of the right to smoke in public etc. But Liberal Democrats should at least not be in the vanguard of calls for restrictions on personal choice and liberty. Indeed I recall a rising star of the party saying as much at a conference fringe meeting a couple of years ago. He said that our role on such issues should be sceptical and questioning of the need for things to be banned. I was quite impressed by this and went on to vote for this person to be party leader, a post he now holds.

So where has this ban on advertising at children come from and why is it prominent in Nick’s new year message? According to Paul Walter (to whom thanks for drawing my attention to this), it’s not party policy and my only recollection of it being mentioned in the campaign was as an off-the-cuff response to a question at an interview with Lib Dem bloggers.

I should say that on the issue itself I have some sympathy with Nick. I find advertising aimed at getting children to emotionally blackmail their parents rather distasteful. If I were the sort of person who wanted to ban things, this is the sort of thing I would want to ban. But following my own wish for the party to have a coherent narrative and preferring the view of Clegg the rising star to that of Clegg the leader on this issue, I will follow the former’s injunction to be sceptical and offer the following concerns about this proposal.

First, it would another example of the state usurping the role of parents and undermining their authority in looking after their children. It’s part of a parent’s allotted role to have to tell their children that they can’t do everything, watch everything or have everything they might wish. Sometimes parents will feel mean in saying no, but it goes with the job. It’s not really very liberal to say parents aren’t fit to decide what to let their children watch and what to buy them, so the state must step in and decide for them.

Second, presumably a significant proportion of commercial children’s television is paid for by advertising. If advertisements shown during children’s television programmes can no longer be aimed at the viewers of said programmes, there is a risk that broadcasters will no longer consider it worthwhile to provide programmes or channels for children. Maybe that is no bad thing. I don’t watch children’s television so I don’t know whether the programmes are any good. But a ban on advertising is likely to mean less television for children.

Third, it might be harder than one might think to decide what is advertising aimed at children and what at adults or whole families. Advertisements that seem to say, ‘You’re not a proper family if you don’t take your kids out for burger, fries and fizzy drinks every other day’ are clearly not good. What about mars bars, or computer games, or family cars? I suspect a ban would not be quite that simple.

Finally, the essential problem won’t go away, just because a certain type of advertisement is banned. Children will still pester parents for stuff – not perhaps stuff seen in advertisements, but stuff featured in TV programmes, stuff they read about in books and magazines, stuff their friends have etc. So the ban won’t actually solve the problem, which is a wider one in society about the undermining of parental confidence how to bring up their children.

So, Nick, please drop this one quickly. If you are trying to promote a liberal vision, why take a stand on a policy position which, while not exactly illiberal, has rather dubious liberal credentials and appears to conflict with our wider message?

Not in front of the children

A week or so ago I referred to the 'quasi-religious zeal' of David Southall's defenders in the wake of his being struck off by the GMC. What I meant by this was the impression they gave that only they saw the true scale and evil of child abuse and that those who disagreed with them were heretics and unbelievers.

This impression is reinforced by this article by paediatrician Nigel Speight in Sunday's Observer in which he claims that his fellow paedistricians are now 'worried about participating in child abuse cases'.

However, it isn't the emotive language of the article that bothers me, so much as the name of the organisation Dr Speight belongs to: Professionals Against Child Abuse (Paca). There is something quite sinister about a group of people adopting such a name. For there is a subliminal message being given here - we are those professionals who are against child abuse. Other professionals - those outside our organisation - are, by implication, professionals indifferent to, or professionals in favour of child abuse.

Southall's defenders believe that there is a conspiracy to deny the existence of child abuse, and in naming their organisation thus, appear to believe also that there are those who do accept that child abuse happens but who don't care and are happy for it to continue.

Of course the reality is rather different. I have never heard anyone, professional or otherwise, express the view that child abuse, in whatever form, either doesn't really happen or is basicially all right. Indeed for anyone to say so would break a major social taboo. Child abuse is widely and rightly recognised as a great social evil of our time, and I doubt whether there is any professional person or public figure who is not against it.

It seems to be that the anguish Dr Speight and Co. feel about being pursued through the GMC by aggrieved parents, is pretty much a mirror image of the pain parents must feel if wrongly accused of harming their children by a paediatrician or other child protection professional.

Child abuse is a deeply emotive subject. The idea of children being harmed by adults who are supposed to be caring for them is a horrific one that rightly stirs people's deepest anxieties. But for that very reason, it is important that cases of suspected child abuse are invesitated thoroughly but dispassionately, with the aim of getting at the truth not pursuing a wider agenda.

Dr Speight comments that:

Professionals against Child Abuse (Paca), may be reluctant to participate in the child death review panels being set up to scrutinise all cases of child deaths.

If so this may be a good thing. For parents involved in such tragic cases are likely to feel concerned about a Paca member taking part in such a review. They will fear that because Paca professionals are on a mission to expose child abuse and believe that others are in denial about its existence, they are likely to have it in for them.

Mutal antagonism between parents and professionals is clearly not good for child protection. If parents feel that they are constantly under suspicion from doctors and social workers, while child protection professionals fear vendettas from aggrieved parents for raising legitimate concerns, the welfare of the child will get lost amid the bickering.

Toynbee vigilante

Thanks (or 'hat-tip' as I gather we bloggers have to say) to Liberal England for drawing my attention to this post at Blood and Treasure
on the evils of Polly Toynbee.

As a health precaution I have had to give up buying the Guardian on days when Toynbee writes. While it is disappointing to learn that her column is still appearing, it is reassuring to know that somebody is keeping watch.

With vigilantes like 'Blood and Treasure' about we may yet foil Toynbee's dastardly plan to make the state employ nannies
for every member of Britain's adult population.

Without a hint of irony...

...I now offer by own bit of praise for the great and the good.

Whoever wins the Lib Dem leadership election will quickly have to appoint their new front bench team. In the last couple of weeks I hears some TV pundit (sorry can't remember who or when) say that Vince Cable might be moved from the Treasury brief to enable him to 'concentrate on being deputy leader'.

I hope neither of the leadership candidates is contemplating this course of action. Deputy leader of itself is essentially a non-job, indeed it is simply deputising for the leader in the House of Commons, it's not even a whole-party role.

It may be that it is expedient for the defeated leadership candidate to be deputy, in addition to holding a major shadown cabinet brief. But what is absolutely clear is that Vince Cable should remain as treasury spokesman.

Fawning on film

Many years ago when I first came across the word 'sycophant' in print, I assumed it was pronounced 'psycho-phant'. Of course as soon as I had mispronounced it thus a couple of times in conversation, I learned my mistake.

But I have always thought my original pronunciation better, capturing as it does the obsessive compulsion that some people appear to feel to fawn over and toady to their superiors.

To see an example of what I mean, watch this excuciating YouTube video by Watford's ultra-loyalist, first Blairite, now Brownite, Labour MP.

Dick Taverne on GM food

I tuned into Sunday's Westminster Hour on Radio 4 to hear Richard Grayson's head-to-head with James Graham about the Lib Dem leadership. But interesting though that was, it wasn't the best item on the programme about a Lib Dem politician.

In the first of a series of features called 'stop the world' which focus on people with maverick views that challenge the consensus, it included an interview with Dick Taverne about his support for genetic modification technology, especially GM food. You can listen to it again here (it's about 45 minutes into the programme).

Taverne has already set up a pressure group Sense about Science to campaign on this and other issues and published an excellent book last year, The March of Unreason, which deals not only with GM, but also subjects such as alternative medicine and organic food.

I have long puzzled over why hostility to GM shoud have become such a totemic cause for environmental groups. My political mentor, Robert Pritchard, who was for many years head of the internationally-renowned Genetics Department at Leicester University, always championed GM technology as having not only social and economic benefits, but also environmental benefits.

So I was surprised when environmental organisations, whose campaigns I usually agreed with, came out so strongly against GM. In many ways, because of its potential benefits in reducing use of artificial chemicals and also of feeding the third world, they should have been its foremost champions.

My hunch is that it was a question of marketing priorities trumping environmental policy. Scare stories about 'frankenstein foods', tampering with nature and playing God were just too good opportunities to miss in terms of gaining publicity and raising funds. It is also a message that plays well to different audiences - the conservative with a small 'c', countryside-loving middle classes as well as the usual supporters of 'green' causes.

Of course the Lib Dems have for some time been the most anti-GM party, although the subject has featured less on conference agendas since Donnachadh McCarthy left. For some years it was debated almost annually at autumn conference in some form or other, with a small but plucky band including Sharon Bowles MEP, Tim Farron MP and one or two others raising their head above the parapet in a losing cause to defend the benefits of GM technology.

For my own part, this issue has certainly changed the way I regard environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. I am inclined to regard their pronouncements with rather more scepticism than before. In many ways their cynical treatment of this issue mirrors that of the multinationals they are so keen to criticise.

I am proud that in Dick Taverne, we have at least one Lib Dem who is taking a stand on this issue.

Wise words on Dr Southall

A wise and well-argued post from David Boyle. Perhaps the moral of the story is that there needs to be more understanding from all who work in 'caring' professions of the harm that can be caused by the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions.

Beyond Rennardism: we need to win the battle of ideas, not just the fight for votes

Last weekend, I intended to write about Chris Rennard’s column in Liberal Democrat News, ‘Going beyond Rennard’, but real life intervened. James Graham’s post on the same subject reassures me that it’s not too late.

Having been a student at Leicester University in the mid-1980s when Chris was East Midlands Area Agent, I can claim to be an early disciple of and missionary for Rennardism. What I learned from Chris in Leicester about winning elections, I brought back to Watford and his techniques have been the basis of our success. Pretty much all the constituencies that have done well in the past two decades will owe him an immense debt.

But Chris’s genius is for electoral tactics and organisation, which is only part of a political party’s operation, and arguably should be subordinate to its wider political mission. If it has been the Lib Dems’ good fortune to have Chris’s immense election-winning skills, it has been our misfortune not to have someone of equivalent stature in charge of policy and political strategy. Mandelson and Co. remodelled the Labour party - not just its style of campaigning but its whole political approach. By contrast, Rennardism is about persuading people to ‘vote for us this time’, rather than to convert them to Liberalism.

As a result, at times it has seemed that the immediate needs of the next election campaign have driven our political narrative rather than the other way round. In my more cynical moments, I suspect that Scotland now has free care for the elderly and no tuition fees not because these are part of a distinctive Liberal approach to society, but because both made good subjects for target mailings and petitions.

The party has learned how to win votes, but needs to learn also how to win hearts and minds. It is noticeable that there are no national newspapers or serious magazines and journals that consistently support the Liberal Democrats. Indeed it is hard to imagine what a Lib-Dem supporting daily or weekly would look like, how it would differ from say The Guardian and the New Statesman (both of which tend to back Labour). It is hard to name a single public intellectual, serious broadsheet journalist or academic who is associated with the Lib Dems. It ought to be a source of shame that although decentralisation and localism are Liberal ideas, the best-known writers associated with the cause are Simon Jenkins, who far from supporting us recently called for the party to disband, and Tristram Hunt a wannabe Labour MP.

Of course, some will argue that such things don’t matter: ‘Eggheads are overrated, they only have one vote each like the rest of us and few people really decide which party to vote for on the basis of broadsheet op-ed pieces, let alone obscure academic monographs and the like’. Such a view is fine if we are simply in the business of coming up with the catchiest, most appealing sales pitch to persuade people to vote for the yellow team not the red or blue equivalent next time.

Our purpose has to be more than that. The Liberal Democrats should be about better public services, more responsive to people, locally accountable. We should be defending citizens from an overweening, bullying state. We should strive to show that it is possible to defend our citizens without jettisoning civil liberties. More contentiously, perhaps, our aim should be to show that it is possible to have progressive, but not nannyish government. To achieve these things, we have to create an intellectual climate where there is a critical mass of support for a distinctively Liberal Democrat approach.

Chris concluded his article by saying that ‘we have to inspire the country with our vision’, but then emphasises that ‘our message must be explained in terms of the tangible benefits of our policies to the people whose votes we seek’. To my mind this both misses the point about the criticisms that are made of his approach and attempts to re-fight an argument that is already won.

We are already pretty good at the latter. I think that pretty much everyone involved in Lib Dem campaigning anywhere that we are serious about winning understands that we have to make our campaigning persuasive to our potential voters, that long tracts about constitutional reform are a no-no in election addresses. The point is that we are rather less good at explaining and inspiring people with our vision, and we need to spend more time doing so. For the Liberal Democrats in a future government to make a real difference we need to win the battle for ideas as well as the fight for votes.

The voice of a true conservative

Writing in this week's New Statesman the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton (he writes the wine column, the Staggers hasn't been taken over by Tories) refers to Christmas as a time when:

the house is awash with plastic rubbish from the appalling new China - it combines capitalist consumerism, communist dictatorship and ecological vandalism in a unique synthesis of the worst aspects of modernity.

Quasi-religious zeal of Southall's defenders will make children and parents suffer

David Southall’s absence of remorse and continued faith in his own rightness in the wake of being struck off by the GMC is an example of ‘noble cause corruption’. Indeed I detect a quasi-religious faith at work in the way David Southall defends his approach to child protection. Interviewed on yesterday’s Today programme, he seemed unwilling and unable to engage with the evidence against him or the arguments of his critics.

The impression I got from the interview was reinforced by the letter in his defence from 38 paediatricians that appeared in yesterday’s Guardian. The authors state that:

There is a determined campaign to deny the existence and reality of child abuse in all its forms, led by a small group, aided and abetted by some journalists and politicians.

This claim by the letter’s signatories seems to me wrong in itself and sinister in its attempt to smear anyone who disagrees with their view of child protection.

I can’t claim any expertise in child protection. But having a passing interest in miscarriages of justice and having read the work of at least some of those who write about such issues, I have never come across anybody who denies that child abuse happens and indeed is a serious problem in modern society.

Authors and journalists such as Richard Webster and Bob Woffinden, and politicians such as John Hemming and Claire Curtis-Thomas, campaign on behalf of those who they believe have been wrongly accused of child abuse. Often they are at pains to stress that child abuse itself is very real and even point out that false accusations are likely to make it harder in the long run to tackle genuine instances of abuse.

So why do the authors of the Guardian letter make the accusation? After all, no one would accuse those who are campaigning on behalf of Barry George in the Jill Dando case of ‘denying the existence of murder’ or being apologists for murderers.

It seems to me that through a combination of professional and moral hubris, David Southall and his defenders have made their own views about child abuse a matter of faith rather than evidence. They believe that they are dealing an evil so widespread that it requires them to act with missionary zeal to proclaim what they believe about the prevalence of harm done by parents to their children. In this worldview evidence counts for very little. It is a battle between true believers and heretics or ‘deniers’.

If the views of the 38 paediatricians are typical of the profession, then from beginning of children’s lives, parents and doctors, whose care is essential to their wellbeing, are working in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion. The dangers of this are obvious: that families will be destroyed through false allegations (something that itself has devastating consequences for children’s wellbeing); that innocent parents of sick children will not seek medical help for fear of being accused of harming them; and that with resources wasted on harassing the innocent, the genuinely guilty will not be discovered in time.

It is worth remarking at this point that in the last couple of weeks, new evidence has emerged questioning the murder conviction of one childminder, while another has been convicted of manslaughter, despite protesting her innocence, and a ‘Sally Clark’-style campaign is already under way on her behalf. In each case expert witnesses were key to the conviction.

When did choice become a dirty word for Liberals?

This exchange (posting and comment) at Jo's Jottings highlights the (to me) strange reluctance of at least some Liberals to endorse the idea of choice in public services.

I joined the Liberal Party in 1985, as a result of reading Jo Grimond's journalism, which demonstrated a sophiticated understanding and critique of Thatcherism. I was a bit surprised to find that few of the Liberals I met agreed with Grimond and most seemed to share Labour's knee-jerk reaction against and refusal to engage with what was happening in British politics during the 1980s.

Troubled by this I asked my new 'Radical Liberal' friends what exactly it was that kept them out of the Labour party. Well, they explained, although we hate the Tories as much as Labour do, Labour are patrician, controlling and corporatist in their approach to public services. We want to empower the citizen and give them more control. They pointed to the way Liberals in Liverpool had encouraged self-build housing co-operatives and had worked with the voluntary sector to provide new homes. They contrasted this with Labour's attachment to monolithic council estates and their general wish to see people perpetually dependent on and grateful to the council.

Strangely, though, as soon as Labour began to embrace the voluntary sector, consultation, citizen engagement and the notion of choice in public services, some Liberals turned against and disowned such ideas and began to adopt Labour-style paternalism.

For that reason I found the re-launch of the Beveridge Group earlier this year a depressing event - because the speeches seemed more an uncritical defence of the public service ethic and public sector professionals than an attempt to empower citizens and give them more say in how services are delivered. In response to my (admittedly rather pointed) question asking whether the group was not a bit patrician and Fabian in its approach, Paul Holmes accused me of not wanting there to be a group promoting social liberalism in the party.

But his comment missed the point. My problem with the Beveridge Group and other 'anti-choice' Lib Dems is not that they support social liberalism, but that they don't.

Let me give you some advice

Following Nicholas Blincoe's unpleasant and unfunny attack on Chris Huhne, and the controversy over whether he is an advisor to Clegg, Jonathan Calder asks whether he can be considered a 'former volunteer adviser to Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy', having occasionally written jokes for them.

Goodness knows what qualifies someone to style themselves an 'adviser'. I remember that the journalist Paul Johnson often claimed to have 'advised Margaret Thatcher on trade union reform', as thought the two of them had crushed Arthur Scargill together, unaided. Yet Johnson is mentioned only once in Thatcher's memoirs, suggesting his role was not quite as great as he likes to think.

Most strange of all was the period when the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, then leader of the Lib Dem Peers, allowed himself to be described as an adviser to Tony Blair, who was then leader of the Labour party. So a parliamentary leader of one party was acting as adviser to the leader of another when the two organisations were not in alliance or coalition. A very odd business indeed.

Atkins, Irving and Griffin at the Oxford Freak Circus

It says it all about the Oxford Union's ridiculous 'debate' that one of the participants should be Mad Ann Atkins of Thought for the Day notoriety.

I recall Atkin's indulgent comments towards Irving on TFTD after his richly deserved (OK, I shouldn't believe people should go to gaol for Holocaust denial, but Irving had it coming to him) imprisonment in Austria.

Atkins' comments on Radio 4 just now were typically barmy, bizarrely accusing demonstrators of hypocrisy and saying they were more offensive than Irving.

Absurd woman, nasty man, great shame that Evan Harris dignified this freak show with his presence.

Deborah Lipstadt on the Oxford Union

Deborah Lipstadt, whose free speech David Irving so notoriously tried to suppress, explains why it is simplistic to imagine that either he or Nick Griffin will be 'crushed in debate' at the Oxford Union.

A pedant writes...

I can't resist correcting Martin Bright on a point of fact in the aformentioned interview with Huhne.

He writes that 'in the two elections held in the 1960s, the Liberal vote collapsed to around two million, and the Parliamentary party was almost wiped out.'

This just isn't so. In fact the two elections held in the 1960s, saw the Liberals increase their number of seats for the first time in a generation, from seven to nine in 1964 and then to 12 in 1966. The two million plus votes achieved in 1966 was considerably higher than in the elections of 1951, '55 or '59.

Martin Bright may be thinking of the 1970 election, when the party did indeed see its vote share and number of seats collapse. But to regard 1970 as being part of the 1960s would be a different order of pedantry.

Chris Huhne in the New Statesman

The Staggers' political editor Martin Bright interviews Chris Huhne in this week's issue.

One curiousity is the statement that Huhne 'has been a New Statesman reader all his adult life'.

If true, this means that he managed to read the magazine between 1978 (after Anthony Howard resigned as editor) and the late 1980s, during which time it was pretty much unreadable. The magazine was obsessed by politics, peddled a very narrow leftist line and was devoid of humour (the saintly Arthur Marshall was sacked as a columnist). I remember finding it a battle to read even a single article, never mind the whole magazine.

So if Huhne managed to read the New Statesmen throughout the 1980s, this feat demonstrates reserves of fortitute and stamina that will certainly serve him well if he does become Lib Dem leader.

On a different tack, I think his line that 'I'm very pleased Nick's now aligned with me', is disingenuous and cheap.

Now I can vote for Clegg with enthusiasm and confidence

I came away from the St Albans hustings reassured and impressed by Nick Clegg, so that I can now vote for him with enthusiasm and confidence.

Unsurprisingly, what clinched it for me was the replies the candidates gave to my own question. This ran something like as follows:

Some Liberal Democrats appear to regard the idea of choice in public services as a stalking horse for neo-Thatcherism. Do we really have to choose between more power for local councils or more power for individuals or can we support both.

The question reflects my own frustration about the party’s internal debate on public services. On the one hand we have Paul Holmes and the Beveridge Group who seem more concerned with defending public sector professionals than articulating a liberal vision (whether social, radical or economic) for improving public services. On the other, the likes of David Laws and Jeremy Browne appear to want to by-pass local democratic structures altogether, advocating an approach that sounds liberating but which will in practice be centralist and unaccountable.

(I didn’t take verbatim notes, am paraphrasing the answers from memory, so apologise in advance if I get any of this wrong.)

Huhne’s answer was to say that although choice should never be a dirty word for Liberal Democrats, there were areas of public service where the market was not appropriate and the idea of choice sometimes an illusion – for example secondary transfer in London in the light of the Greenwich judgment. Once again he praised Denmark and said that although a small country it had decentralised public services. It would then be up to local decision-makers to decide how services would be delivered – for example whether to involve private sector providers.

Clegg said that he wanted to put the word choice to one side, because it had become tainted. He then said that the party must be unambiguously dentralising, devolving decision-making down to local level and there was no doubt about his commitment to that. However, he stressed that we must be on the side of the people accessing the services. For them bureaucrats in town halls can appear much the same as Whitehall bureaucrats, so there was no point in decentralising power unless people felt that something had changed for them, that services were more responsive and people were more in control. He cited the example from Wigan mentioned on Question Time about giving a parent control over their disabled child’s travel to school budget.

For me, while neither response contained anything that I would actually disagree with, Chris’s answer was B+, but Nick’s a straight ‘A’. It showed an awareness that decentralisation is not just about processes, but about outcomes and that fundamentally we must be on the side of the people. It reinforces my view of Nick’s intellectual confidence in Liberalism as an ideology. To be fair to Huhne, starting out as the underdog, he has had to put some ideological distance between himself and Clegg. Although Charles Anglin is right that Huhne’s campaign has at times appeared to ‘pander to every statist hobby horse it could find’, I am sure that Huhne is closer to Clegg than to Paul Holmes. I will be more than happy to support Chris if he wins.

However, it would be perverse if I didn’t vote for the candidate who most clearly articulates my view of Liberalism. I had cause to doubt because of my concern over Nick’s performance on Question Time and disappointment with elements of his campaign. Of course a hustings meeting cannot assuage those particular doubts. But it can and has, especially when considered alongside the bloggers’ breakfast’‘ reports convinced me that Clegg’s political approach, his commitment and passion are simply too good an opportunity to miss. Huhne might in some ways be a safer choice, but Clegg has the potential not just to win more seats for the party but to lead a Liberal political and intellectual renaissance in Britain. How can I not vote for that?

Shameful, wrong and nothing to do with free speech

Sometimes the cleverest people can also in their own way be the stupidest. I suppose that it the lesson to be learned from the childish and irresponsible decision of the members of the Oxford Union to invite the author and holocaust denier David Irving and BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak in a Union debate.

Let’s be clear from the start, this is not a question of free speech. Griffin and Irving are entitled to express their views within the laws of the land. The point is whether an organisation such as the Oxford Union should be giving them a platform to do so. Oxford is one of Britain’s elite universities, and although I confess to ignorance of its precise constitutional position, the Oxford Union is linked in most people’s minds with the university. It is also Britain’s best-known student debating chamber. There must be some assumption, therefore, that those invited to address its debates have things to say that are worth hearing, that will somehow stimulate the intellects of our supposedly best and brightest young people. It is ludicrous to imagine that this is the case with either Irving or Griffin, absurd to imagine that they have something useful to contribute to a debate about free speech.

Among Irving’s best-known recent activities was an attempt to prevent a legitimate scholar from exercising her right to free speech. He is a proven liar and charlatan, who adopts the trappings of genuine scholarship to falsify the historical record in order to promote his own hateful and anti-semitic views. As for Griffin, he is the leader of a political party which, whatever its attempts to appear respectable, promotes a doctrine of hate, exists on the fringes of criminality and which would deny the human rights of, including the right to free speech of a substantial proportion of our fellow citizens.

In short, on top of being purveyors of deeply unpleasant opinions, neither have any mark of intellectual or public distinction that might render their views of interest to decent people. While they are entitled to free speech, an organisation such as the Oxford Union has no business inviting them and is being irresponsible in giving them this opportunity for publicity and the credibility of addressing a supposedly intellectually respectable institution.

It is disappointing that at least two Lib Dem bloggers (here and here) do not see this and have defended the Oxford Union decision. Does this mean they would be happy to see Griffin or Irving addressing fringe meeting at a Lib Dem conference or a Centre Forum seminar or Liberal Democrat History Group meeting? The logic of their comments is that they should be – indeed that such invitations are a necessary part of defending free speech. But I, for one, would not want to be a member of any organisation that extended invitations to speak to Irving or Griffin and I like to think most Liberals would agree.

No doubt when the event takes place, there will be a big demonstration outside the meeting, Griffin and Irving will try to occupy the moral high ground, as TV cameras show them appearing statesmanlike (while barely supressing smirks), as the police protect them from an angry and potentially violent mob. I can only hope this doesn’t come to pass.

Instead, I would like to think that people who are in the future invited to speak to the Oxford Union consider whether they wish to be regarded in the same company as Griffin and Irving, and if not then they should favour some other worthy body with the benefit of their views on whatever topic is under discussion. Doubtless the membership of the Oxford Union will find other ways of attracting publicity by getting nasty people to address their ‘debates’. Perhaps for their next trick they will ask Ian Brady or Ian Huntley to discuss child protection policies, for example. But genuine scholars and mainstream politicians should give their meetings a wide berth.

Can Clegg raise his game?

Tonight I am off to the St Albans hustings, which I hope will enable me to reach a firm decision as to who to vote for.

At the start of the campaign, I thought it almost unimaginable that I wouldn’t vote for Clegg. But events since then have given cause for serious doubts, and I would certainly be more than happy to have Huhne as leader.

The Clegg campaign has been very poor indeed, which gives cause for doubt about Nick’s choice of acolytes. There has been an impression that his organisers, fancying their man to be the equivalent of 1–0 ahead in a football match, have tried to grind out a win, with little attempt to inspire or enthuse or to confront the difficult issues that the party faces. So I can only hope that he will have the strength of character to avoid rewarding his undeserving campaign team with top jobs, thus creating a bunker mentality from the start.

He has appeared too afraid of being painted into the right-wing corner and therefore seems to have kept his comments on public services as anodyne as possible. For example, while I can understand (and agree with) his ruling out of vouchers and continental-style health insurance, I would have liked to hear a clearer willingness to take on the ‘Liberals against choice’ and ‘experts know best’ brigade, who have effectively stifled party debate on public service reform in recent years.

Clegg’s apparent flakiness under attack has also been a problem and he will have to do something it about quickly. It is the lot of third party leaders to be subjected to ridicule by the media and he will have to learn to be more resilient and phlegmatic.

In short, I wanted to be inspired and enthused by the Clegg campaign, but have been disappointed. The ‘bloggers' breakfast' session, as reported by James Graham, provides quite a bit of reassurance. But again the situation was within the Clegg comfort zone – thinking aloud among friends, with the opportunity to be discursive. It’s not the same as being snapped at by Paxman or Humphrys.

Yet I keep hoping that Clegg will come good. Of all the national politicians I have come across, he is the one who combines most clearly both an instinctive and intellectual commitment to Liberalism, which he is capable of not just of articulating as abstract principle, but actually of applying to specific policy areas.

So, come on Nick. Show us tonight that the campaign so far has been an aberration and that you are not merely just a likeable chap and a good liberal, but really have what it takes to be leader.

Huhne ahead on Question Time

Last night’s Question Time was my first real opportunity to take notice of the leadership election campaign. We moved house a week ago, so during the last fortnight all spare time has been spent packing, moving and unpacking endless cardboard boxes. Debates about Trident replacements and alternatives, school vouchers etc. have passed me by.

Before commenting on the debate, I should perhaps mention the political baggage that I carry in assessing the merits of the candidates. I want the Liberal Democrats to be a party of the libertarian centre-left, a contrast with the Conservatives and with Labour’s patrician, top-down instincts. We should combine a clear social conscience and commitment to social justice with a belief in decentralisation of power and support for personal liberty.

Over the years, my biggest frustration with the Lib Dems has been the disjunction between the our professed abstract principles, which include an emphasis on individual choice and freedom, and the detailed policy prescriptions we arrive at, which often seem every bit as nannyish as those of New Labour. This stops us from developing a clear political narrative because there is no obvious connection between what we say we stand for and how we respond to the issues of the day.

To me Nick Clegg seems to understand this problem better than Huhne. He strikes me as a thoroughgoing Liberal, sufficiently confident in his own ideological principles to reject the kind of ‘intellectual cringe’ towards socialism that many Lib Dems seem to indulge in for fear being thought right-wing. Although there is much I agree with Chris Huhne about, and I would be more than happy to have him as leader, there seems to be a touch of the Toynbees, a whiff of patrician Fabianism, about him.

So my default position is to vote for Clegg because he is more in tune with my political instincts and beliefs. I have chosen not to sign up as a Clegg supporter, because I want to see how the candidates perform before reaching a final decision. But it would take something dramatic to convince me to vote for Huhne.

Last night, therefore, I was rooting for Clegg. So it is with some disappointment, that I say that Huhne came across as the stronger candidate, with a clearer worldview, which he articulated confidently. He was also the first to mention the importance of localism in our approach to public services, and gave a clearer sense of how we are different from the other parties.

Although Clegg was generally engaging and articulate, he foundered badly on the question about his criticisms of Huhne in the last leadership election. Had he been on the Today programme in a one-to-one interview, he would have been shredded for his answer that ‘this was in a totally different context’ and ‘of course I don’t believe that now because I haven’t said it again’. Far better to say that he was offering a genuine view about Chris’s last leadership campaign and that there is a danger in producing eye-catching policies that give hostages to fortune.

It makes me fear that because of Clegg’s attractive quality of appearing to be thinking out loud rather than sticking to a script, he has been given an armchair ride by the media so far. On the evidence of last night, there is a danger that he will come unstuck when pinned down by an aggressive interviewer, as he would be if he becomes leader.

I hope to attend a hustings before making my mind up. It would still seem rather perverse not to vote for Clegg given how strongly I agree with his political outlook. Last night did not to enough to make me change my voting intention, but it certainly sowed the seeds of doubt.